The Wonderful Big Data Strategy At Royal Bank Of Scotland

RBS has developed a Big Data strategy which it calls “personology” in an attempt to reconnect with customers.

The bank, which is currently undergoing re-privatization seven years after it was bailed out to the tune of £45 billion by UK taxpayers during the financial crisis, is combining data analytics with a “back to the 70s” approach to customer service.

The philosophy is one of the developments of the 800-person strong analytics department, created as part of a £100 million investment in analytic skills and technology across the organization.

RBS head of analytics Christian Nelissen told me that the move is about restoring a disconnect which developed between banks and customers sometime after the 1970s. The theory goes that early attempts at data-driven marketing – such as audience segmentation and mass mailing were too focussed on what the banks wanted - usually making sales – and often ignored what customers wanted.

“At some point”, Nelissen tells me, “We got to the point where we were just using data we had about our customers literally to get products out of the door.

The plan is to restore the trust and feeling of support that bank customers would have expected during the 1970s or before – when bank staff would know a customer by name, understand what their needs were on a personal level and attempt to offer services that support those needs.

Nelissen says “We didn’t just try to sell them products – we tried to help them with their accounts and to get the most out of what we could offer.”

As an example of the new strategy in operation, analysts combed financial transaction data to pinpoint situations where customers may have been paying twice for services packaged with bank accounts – such as mobile phone insurance or breakdown assistance.

Although at first there were worries that alerting customers to this situation could prompt them to cancel their RBS products in at least some cases, in practice, every single person who was alerted opted to cancel the duplicate third party service and retain their RBS service.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) London headquarters (ANDREW COWIE/AFP/Getty Images)

Other services which fall under the Personology banner include wishing customers a happy birthday if they visit a branch on the day, and automated text messages to let them know that their cash is safe if they accidentally leave it behind after withdrawing it from an ATM. Mortgage holders will also receive automated messages reminding them when fixed interest deals are coming to an end – rather than allowing them to automatically transfer onto more expensive variable rates – even though this will theoretically, in the short term at least, lead to a fall in revenue for the bank.